Situation: A company is concerned because recent accidents on the job have boosted their Modification or MOD rate and increased company expenses. They have held workshops with employees and talked about increasing safety, but employees have been lax in complying with safety measures because these are time-consuming. How do you boost employee ownership of job safety?
Advice from the CEOs:
- Safety
is key to the bottom line and future of the company. Enlist employees to
monitor each other and point out when others are acting unsafely.
- Allow / encourage employees to “harass” (in a playful sense) each other if they see someone not working safely.
- Anyone caught in inappropriate unsafe behavior is penalized and required to pay $1 into a kitty which is spent on a company-wide benefit such as a pizza lunch.
- Create a presentation, graphically showing the negative impact that a high MOD rate has on the company, and on employees’ incomes. Hold a company meeting, give this presentation and discuss with them how costly hazardous behavior is, and how jobs can ultimately be lost as a result.
- If nothing else works, explore creating a shell corporation to employ the employees who are subject to potential injury and effectively “outsource” them like high tech does. This may lower the MOD rate to 100 as a new business.
- Look for other insurers who will lower the company’s MOD rate.
- Create consequences for flagrant violations of safety guidelines.
- Do thorough background checks before hiring new workers. Avoid new hires with a history of disability claims.
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